posted by Christopher W Holton
Renewed calls for country to end practice after girl bleeds to death following mass initiation into secret society
“A 10-year-old girl has died after undergoing female genital mutilation during a mass initiation into a secret society in Sierra Leone.
The girl, one of 68 involved in the rite, bled to death on Tuesday following complications from the FGM procedure.”
A number of women, as well as cutters, known as soweis, are now on the run, among them the deceased girl’s mother, said Rugiatu Turay, a former government minister who founded the Amazonian Initiative Movement, a grassroots group dedicated to ending FGM.
“This is the second time that a girl has died in that family: one of the sisters died of excessive bleeding after being initiated two years ago, and the father was against it this time, but the mother is the breadwinner in the family and she wanted it.”